The Voice on the Wire by Ball, Eustace Hale

"I give you my word for that, Warren." Shirley rose, putting the torn-up papers into his pockets. "I am sorry for the past--but you have made the present for yourself. Good-bye."

Warren returned to his cell and the detective to the club house.

There he found an additional cable message. It said: "Countess Laschlas has been dead ten months." It was signed like the other.

Shirley tore up the message, and blinked more than seemed necessary.

"Poor little old lady, she knows it all now. I will not have to tell her."

* * *

That afternoon Shirley called again at the Hotel California for Helene.

"I want you to go to a sweet, old-fashioned English tea-room, where I may tell you the rest of the story. There will be no tango music, no cymbals, no tinkling cocktails, nor, champagne. Can you pour real tea?"

"I am an English girl. I have been five days without it."

As they were ensconced at the quaint little table, he realized how wondrously blended in her was that triad of feminine essential spirits: the eternal mother instinct, the sensuous strength of the wife-love and the wistful allurement of maiden tenderness.

"Does my great big boy wish three lumps of sugar, after his hard tasks?"

"He'll die in the flower of immaturity if he has too many sweets in one day."

He drew out his memorandum book, opening it to a closely-written page.

"Before the confections, I must hand in my report to the commanding officer."

"Advance three paces to the front, and hand over the details," and she added another lump of sugar, with a mischievous twinkle in the blue eyes.

"Very well, excellency. We transcribed the addresses of Warren's gangsters from his note-book, and they have all been arrested. The men we captured in the earlier skirmishes are all languishing in the tombs, as accomplices in his crime, as well as for their attempts against my own life. You will be astonished, Helene, at the revelations of his operations as shown by his bank-books, a translation of that diary and some of the letters which I took when I burglarized his rooms. I have sent a code letter to Phil, advising him to confess all, and that man's testimony adds to the corroboration. I went down to the District Attorney with a full statement of the facts, leaving nothing unbared. Like me, he agreed that it were best to let the law take its course, demanding the full penalty, and saving the honor of a dozen families who would have been dragged into the case, had not Warren laid himself liable by the murder of his confederate, Taylor. That young man was an electrical genius--with his brains misguided by his equally misdirected employer. There is no chance of a miscarriage of justice, and Warren had accumulated so much money that many of the victims of his organization can be reimbursed in full."

"You have handled all this with a suspicious skill for a lazy society man, with no experience in such matters."

Shirley understood the subtle sarcasm of the remark, but he proceeded unruffled, to lull her suspicious.